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Palestine fingers Israel for blasting Gaza off the net

Services wiped out in DDoS attack

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A Palestinian minister is blaming foreign hackers for taking out internet services and servers in the West Bank and Gaza.

Palestinian communications minister Mashur Abu Daqqa blames the Israeli state for what is describes as a coordinated DDoS attack against core communication systems.

“Since this morning all Palestinian IP addresses have come under attack from places across the world,” the minister told AFP on Tuesday. "I think from the manner of the attack and its intensity that there is a state behind it, and it is not spontaneous.

“Israel could be involved as it announced yesterday that it was considering the kind of sanctions it would impose on us.”

The disruption comes a day after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation voted to admit Palestine as a member of the group, a move that went down badly in Israel, the Washington Postadds.

Abu Daqqa said the Palestinian banking system had been isolated from the attack, a claim that is yet to be independently confirmed.

Conflict in cyberspace is one aspect of a propaganda battle that has accompanied the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Routinely this involves defacing websites of one side or the other but sometimes slightly more sophisticated tactics are brought into play. For example, Israeli cyberactivists have invited pro-Israeli surfers to install a tool that attacks websites associated with Hamas in the past. Hamas has controlled Gaza since June 2007. Its rival Fatah controls the West Bank. ®